KEY POINTS:
CANBERRA - Foreign Minister Alexander Downer says Commissioner Terence Cole was given plenty of leeway to investigate the government's role in the AWB oil-for-food scandal.
The Cole report on allegations that the Australian wheat exporter paid almost A$300 million ($351.57 million) in kickbacks to the regime of former Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein in breach of United Nations sanctions against Iraq will be tabled in parliament today.
Labor claims the government fiddled the terms of reference to ensure it would not be implicated in the outcome, an allegation strenuously denied by Prime Minister John Howard and Mr Downer.
"The terms of reference did give the commissioner the opportunity to establish whether the government had been working with AWB Ltd, whether, as (Opposition Leader Kim) Beazley said, we were corrupt," Mr Downer told ABC Radio.
"Mr Beazley and (opposition foreign affairs spokesman Kevin) Rudd have been saying we have been lying. Their credibility will be put to the test today as well, when the report is published."
Mr Rudd says the opposition will be fixed on the government's role in the AWB scandal when parliament resumes today.
"Our job in this week ahead is to focus all of our energy and resources on holding this government accountable on this, the worst corruption scandal in this country's history, and where this country's long-term foreign policy reputation is at stake," he told ABC Radio today.
The government had been recklessly negligent on the issue, Mr Rudd said.
"The government got 35 sets of warnings over a five-year period that the AWB was up to no good and the government, at a minimum, is guilty of negligence and not responding to any one of those warnings."
But Mr Downer, who along with Mr Howard and then trade minister Mark Vaile appeared in the witness box at the Cole commission hearings, repeated that he and his colleagues had been honest and open.
"I answered questions before the Cole Commission, as did Mr Vaile and the prime minister, and of course I answered dozens and dozens of questions in the parliament about this issue and we've been entirely consistent, all of us," he said.
Mr Downer said Australia was the only one of 65 or so countries involved in the scandal to have set up an open inquiry into the issue.
Mr Cole is expected to find that a large number of senior AWB staff knew the illicit payments breached UN sanctions against Iraq, and that AWB deceived the Australian government and the UN.
- AAP
